Skins
by Coco-Minu
Summary: This is how to drink your hypocrisy down, how to become enamoured with your lies, how to live in your own skins. This is how to love a monster. JuugoxIno.
1. Prologue

Summary: _(This is how to drink your hypocrisy down, how to become enamoured with your lies, how to live in your own skins.) This is how to love a monster. _

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: I have been thinking for a while about this now. I have a plot, I have a plan, I have things sorted. Once again, a crack pairing, and Juugo is just the way I swing. Ino is the way I roll. The almost favourites guys are just in betweens. So hypothetically speaking, for people who never know what I am on about, this should be fine. Wonderful, is it not? So, you get '**Skins**', which may be otherwise known as '**How to Love a Monster**' according to some people who knew this was coming, or something to that effect anyway. Much thanks to _Demonic Angel Clone_ for the prodding, _Super-Sweet_ for being my pet goldfish, and _Corderoy Pants_ for being the love of my life and checking this over.

Warning(s): Bad language, mentions of M rated stuff, seriously dark at points.

* * *

**Skins**

* * *

**_Prologue_**

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a girl and a monster.

Except, the girl was a liar who drunk down the hypocrisy she became enamoured with at twelve years old and pumped her charcoal veins full of pain just to feel alive again; and the monster was the one unprotected and unprepared, he really wasn't all that repulsive at all, and in the dreams of long ago he was the person to count sometimes as everyday or forever with her because she was more than just a girl to him.

There were no princesses in their story, just forest floor sex and a dream of God because that was what he wanted her to be. Because some nights she lifted her frail arms above her head, and screamed for more than this – _and he believes it works when she does because she is beautiful she is_ – because she could do anything. He'd give her that. She could do magic, and somewhere along his blurred fluid lines drawn in the dirt she thought he was special too. Well, not so long ago, anyway. But that was enough.

He'd accepted long ago that this story wasn't a proper one, that when it started she was just the girl everyone wanted to be or wanted and he was just an awkward stranger offering her nothing at all in return for her company but liquefied danger until she knew what safety really was. He should have known then to lock his doors. He'd seen her make a boy cry, watch it, then wipe the tears away without much remorse. But he wanted to believe that someone who looked so harmless wouldn't whisper niceties in his ears and tear away their foundation and he knew if anyone asked he would say it was him to make her crack, not the other way around.

He supposed it was sort of like they were a man and a woman in a book; except their story wasn't like every single scribbled out best seller with a happily ever after where the partner in crime was whatever the lead wanted and that was how he would write it. Because nobody would believe that the girl was the one to hurt him, the one to recite words over and over to make him think himself beautiful – _justlikeher justlikeher justlikeher in every heartbeat_ – because she could give you anything and pull her half-hearted dusty heart from directly under anyone she wanted.

Once upon a time, there was them; and whenever she was asked what happened, she'd give a simple reply because nobody needed to know that she had no remorse, that if she ever had any such thing in her body it had been buried long ago, that she told herself that was the reason for her secretive smile instead of inside really enjoying every bloody second of this fucked up mess but she didn't really want to be the one that enjoyed breaking him.

But still, they're standing here like this, and she's giving the same answer over and over until it makes him want to crack if it means having her fingers rake over his skin again –_ if it means her saying she loves him just once more_ – because he loves her and somehow she doesn't need to say she loves him too because he knows it but he wants to hear it anyway. So does she, and that's why she's hoping that pulling at the concrete base they built will make them both wonder how long it takes until they fall even though she probably knows it'll never work.

Once upon a time, there was a girl and a monster. Except the girl didn't know when she was lying anymore even though she was enamoured with drinking gossip down, so she didn't know who she was anymore; and the monster had beauty that was more than skin deep so it shook her to the very core, until she couldn't think of a reason why she told him she was just a girl and not anything he wanted her to be. Just to top it off, if anyone asked, she'd say their story was called this: **How to Love a Monster**.

And no, it didn't end happily ever after.

* * *

Love me, hate me, notice that I do not take life all that seriously because doing that makes you dull. If you feel particularly inclined, drop me a note, because constructive critisism is given a good home and reviews are loved like nothing else. :)


	2. Model Me

Summary: _(This is how to drink your hypocrisy down, how to become enamoured with your lies, how to live in your own skins.) This is how to love a monster. _

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: First chapter of five, excluding the prologue and epilogue. We have been here many times before, with the ridiculously long notes and the like. Thanks to those who have favourites, alerted and reviewed only this far in. Babies, you all amaze me. Also, because **Super-Sweet** pointed out that Juugo is a pervert, he is not! He is eighteen years old according to the data books at the present whilst Ino is fifteen, meaning she was wrong and he is not twenty something. You silly cousin, you.

Warning(s): Bad language, mentions of M rated stuff, seriously dark at points.

* * *

**Skins**

* * *

_**Model Me;**_

* * *

She is Ino.

She is the girl you always wanted to be. Except slightly more wide eyed and fucked up, and she expects you to deal with it. It's the way she rolls; she'll laugh if you ask about the puncture marks lining her skin like a dot-to-dot puzzle or if you even dare to spread some rumour about what she did last night. She is the girl who has mastered humanity, and knows how very easy it is to handle.

Ino is the girl who has mastered humanity because she has mastered manipulation. When she was twelve, she got the teacher before Umino fired for sexual relations with a minor when he tried to kiss her. When she was fifteen, she learnt how to deal with the feel of hands because people always wanted her. At seventeen, she is the protégé of the torture and interrogation department and the thing people want to fold like a photograph and store behind their eyes for the worst of nights to play pretend.

The best thing is, underneath the underneath like her old friend Kakashi once said; she no longer feels anything.

She is Ino. And the very worst thing to her is the splitting headache the next morning, the people who think they can be her, and those who think they can be more than just the girl most likely to end up in tiny pieces. There is one girl in every year the ends up heartless – _usually the one who ends up the first to die, if not always_ – and people never thought it would be her. She knew all along, because belief and a pretty face is all it takes to make the world fall in love with you.

And sometimes, she likes to cause pain to people, just to see if she gets a kick.

(Which she never does, _butwhocaresanyway_?)

If anyone tries to take her down, they'll burn away with her. So to hell with emotions, with her team that didn't want her anymore, with anything and everyone that contradicted a single piece of shit that escaped her lips. She can be your dirty little secret and that is fine; but stab her in the back and she'll make sure to survive to repay the favour. To her, it's just the newest fix. Who cares if you're hurting? Everyone is. Such is the way of the world, and don't you forget it.

She is Ino, and she is human. Because humans like to conform.

* * *

This is how to live as what you are.

"I want to feel!"

She screams, arms thrown into the air and spinning in endless circles until she is doubled over gasping for something to fill her lungs. Her hair is tumbling over to hide her face, and she is grabbing clumps of muddy grass and ripping them to shreds with her lacquered nails. This is not how to live, because living is not just breathing and plodding on. Living is not waiting for something to happen, not this way at least. Living is believing. But Ino doesn't believe.

There are ugly warm tears spilling from her eyes, salty and unforgiving and stinging. It's not from sadness or anger, but more because she has perfected the art of making things the way she wants them. If she can lie to everyone else, she wants to believe that she can lie to herself too. Some people are that good at acting and right then she wants to be. She wants to be more than this.

It is only an hour later when it begins to rain again that she sits up straight with puffy, bleary vision and hopes that the lightning strikes her. When her desire is not sated, she screeches again, wailing at whoever done this to her. She refused to believe it was herself. There is a startled grunt, and it is not her own. She shoots to her feet, and whips around ready to fight only to see a retreating lump of a man. It's not what she's asking for, but it's something right then and she wants a sign. So he'll do.

"Please, don't go."

She whispers, her voice cracking from the pressure of everything. Her shoulders are bearing too much weight, and her ribs wanted to fall to pieces from the pummelling her heavy heart was giving them. The man stops. His huge form shifts awkwardly around. She heard herself take a breath in, momentarily stunned by his bright red eyes. He was no Uchiha, but they were crimson. Like they had seen too much in a lifetime. They were weary, cautious, blank. Almost inhuman, for every human longed for companionship and yet he seemed to possess no need for such trivialities.

"I'll hurt you if I don't."

His voice is deep, and she supposes if he means it as a threat he needs to put in more effort. Under the bleak statement, she can almost hear pleading for her to just leave him alone to soak in the rain and feel the cold of all he has done. One glance at his hands shows that he has laboured, and he had probably killed for they were rough and large. Ready for action. Somehow, she still does not find him threatening. He may be a murderer, or many thing more, but he stopped for her and that is more than most people have done for her in forever and a day.

"Please be my guest. Kill me, even."

She grins, throwing back her head and laughing. He flinches at this. She knows the sight of her bare, exposed neck may have done this, and she can almost sense his hands wanting to claw up and choke her. She wants it. She'd give anything for it. Anything just to feel a little fear, a little adrenaline, a little anything. She wanted him to make her scream. Oh, he's a murderer, it's obvious. But something underneath seems softer, and she wants to break through to it and let him asphyxiate her.

"You don't want to live?"

It is a enquiry, a question he seems to find difficult making leave his mouth. Her eyes rake his body before staring directly into his. Yes, she wants this, they read in between their glimmer and underneath the lies. She wants it more than anything. She is hurting more than anyone she has ever met, and although she thinks her heart heavy she cannot feel anything but a faint off-key beat where she supposes it should be. Everyone is suffering, sure. She's just the one who can taste the pain a little more.

"Why should you in a world like this?"

She asks, the grin suddenly gone from her smug face. He seems to consider her question carefully for a few seconds, fumbling lightly with his hands. They arched and dipped, creating steeples and domes. Dips, basements, slips of reality left to the imagination. He could craft them all, was what she thought right then, if only he had the power. This man who would challenge her perception deserved at least that.

"Belief."

Ino already believes. She believes in her vanity complex. She runs around the village once every morning, just to make herself feel thin enough. She spends an hour or more doing her makeup every morning, just to make herself pretty enough. She looks in the mirror every morning and glides her thumb over her protruding ribs and hip bones, passes her soft touch over her glossy lips and smiles. Just because everything she does makes her feel enough, even if only for a second.

"I don't know how to believe."

She answers, her mouth suddenly dry although the rain is pounding harshly against her bones. He could just reach out with his hands and snap her as easily as he snapped chopsticks apart when they came from convenience stores. So she can't understand why he doesn't, why he is standing here like this and letting her live. She edges towards him, and then reaches out her frail hands to touch his. She lifts them to her neck, and bows her head.

"Don't make me do this."

His mind is already beginning to reel male_-female-male-female-victim-victim-victim-you_ and what she is doing to him is not helping. Her body is tiny and useless, battered like he supposes she is. He can taste how easy it would be once she set him off, how she'd smell like blood and how that pretty face would look even better with a small streak of blood across her cheek. How he'd make her cry, make her fear him, make her scream. He can't stop himself. His grip tightens as hers slackens, and her hands drop to her side in wanted defeat. She isn't even trembling.

Then something is seeping into him, and he can't stop himself. He can feel the blood surging through his skin, the itch slipping through his system like fire. The urge needs to be filled, and his hands are closing around her neck tighter and tighter. Then with her last ounce of strength as her eyes begin to slide shut, she flips her hands into the air with shock in her eyes and whispers words he cannot understand.

"It's lonely in here."

She tells him. He already knows. He can feel her in the darkest corner of his mind, and he can hear the girl who is unconscious on the floor in front of him. He doesn't even know her name, but he knows she looked pitiful. He knows she wanted to get out of this life. He knows that she looks too harmless and sharp-worded to be a killer. But if she can do this, she probably is and he's not sure that he wants to know her this well.

"Get out!"

He snarls. He believes he can make her get out if he grips his head hard enough, if he can stop feeling his legs buckle under her pressure, if he shouts loud enough. But he cannot even control his own head, let alone a little girl trying to pull his strings and make him do backflips on whim. But he can already feel a foreign calmness creeping through his skin, and he's not sure he can do it. Then he looks at his hands. They are pink and fleshy, almost human all over again. He has skin like hers, and she has obliged him.

"The curse seal, eh?"

She says it with some intrigue, and he isn't sure he likes it. How does she even know about such a thing? He is kneeling in front of her, and she is looking up at him with eyes that are too blue. Almost like an endless expanse you could get lost in. This frail, pathetic, needy-looking girl could do just what Sasuke and Kimimaro before him could do in seconds. She had stopped him, and she'd made it look damn easy. He can taste blood, and it's not hers. He is biting his lip. He is shocked. He is unsure what to do. But he can feel his hands shaking.

"How did you stop me?"

He needs to prevent himself from saying why. She wanted that death so much. He is still on his knees, and he gradually lets himself slide back to the ground to sit until he cannot see that look anymore. The faux innocence, the glimmer of pain, the depth anyone could slip into and not want to leave. This girl was miserable and broken, and yet despite hurting so much she was able to do something he'd never been able to do himself. It is almost sick that she had willed herself to die by his hands. Those of a complete stranger. She is the oddest person he has ever met.

"I'm not as weak as I look. Don't you want to know why?"

She seemed to pick up on his hesitation. Her voice was almost breathless, and she sat up to look at him. She wanted direct eye contact, she wanted to tell the truth and he didn't like that at all. She seemed only a little younger than him, even if she still looked like a girl, and the general air that radiated from her was one of softness instead of danger. How could such a person survive untainted in their world? His lips pursed.

"Yes. Assuming would be wrong."

He muttered. She gave a weak smile, the only one he thought was remotely truthful from the moment he met her. It wasn't all flashing pearly teeth and beauty, trying to entice someone and capture them; it wasn't forcing someone to do what she wanted. That smile was tired, slipping away, more like her. He wondered if she had another smile too, one she reserved for those she loved. One she tucked away long ago, to be used only when she could feel that whatever she held for her companions wasn't anything heartless.

"Because people like you make me want to believe."

She tells him, and he opens his mouth to ask how she could ever know anyone like him but sees the needle tracks on her arms and a daring flash in her eyes as he does that tells him he shouldn't. There are some thing that she doesn't want people to know, just as with everyone else. She buries herself under layers of masks, and he doubts very much that anyone other than him has even seen her weakness for so much as a second. Instead, the question comes out differently.

"Is it love that did this to you?"

This question seems a lot kinder, but something in her stance gives away her stunned feeling. Her body goes rigid for milliseconds. She smiles again, the weakened real grin gone and replaced with bright white teeth in what he supposes is meant to be a winning smile once more. She looks so very breakable right then he wants to take the words back and choke on them, rather than see her suffer.

"Something like that."

Then she is gone, and all that is left as proof of her existence is barely worth noting. The indent where she fell to the ground unconscious, the smoke from the concentration of chakra she used, the smell of flowers with a hint of vanilla shampoo. But somehow, he wants to gather it up. This girl could control things, and he doesn't believe in much but right then he wants to believe in her. Because one day, he knows that she will be more than this. Everything about her tells him she could even be a God.

"God."

He whispers. The word is a stranger to him, but it feels familial and warm. Like it belongs. He tries it out a few more times, just because he can. Because he likes the sound of it as it rolls off his tongue, the small jumpy excited feeling it gives him. He definitely believes in that girl, and since he never asked her name he'll call her that instead. Because she could be more, and to him she already is.

This is not how to live as what you are, but rather what boy wants girl to be.

* * *

This is how to believe in yourself.

"I had a dream that you were happy again, last night."

Chouji told her, pouring coffee beans into one cup and icy water into another. He knows the routine she lives, the way she won't even drink caffeine like Shikamaru or him in order to stay awake. She's too scared of the calories, and he's too sick of arguing. But today she stands up and stops him from running the glass of water, starts filling out two lots of beans for him with a strange look on her face.

"It sucks dreaming about things that will never happen."

She tells him softly. But she pours boiling water into both cups, and she drinks down the coffee in front of him. He doesn't say anything, despite her words being so blunt and unfeeling. She forgot what it was like to feel long ago, and nobody blames her although she probably thinks they do knowing what she used to be like. But he smiles to himself, because all the time while she says she's sad she's drinking properly.

"Want some rice, too?"

He chances. She looks weary but nods a yes, and for the first time in a long time he sees her eating food. He's not sure whether to believe it or not, whether or not early celebrations would be in order, whether or not to tell Shikamaru he really thought she was doing better this time. But he wasn't sure Shikamaru wanted to hear it, knowing how he treated her last. He wasn't even sure if she would forgive him. Even if she did want to believe that he always knew what was best, slapping her in the face would have pained her less than what had been said in his brutal anger.

"You are wondering what happened."

She says without much enthusiasm as she washes her empty bowl and reaches for the towel to dry it. She was always the one best at reading others, it was a shame she could never read herself entirely.

"Yes."

He admitted, taking the bowl from her hands. The bones were still sticking out, her knuckles still protruded sharply and the veins still jutted out of her skin almost sickeningly. But her skin was regaining a little of the colour it had before, instead of the pasty grey it had been starting to turn a week ago. He used to look at that pallor and then want to stare at emerald trees and cheerful orange flowers for days on end, just to see things a little brighter.

"I met someone more beautiful than me."

She doesn't tell him that he was a monster. But that's the closest to the truth she is going to tell Chouji, when he has that stupid hopeful grin on his face. That strange man made her believe that some things were only skin deep, and not a lot was much deeper. But he was so insistent on not harming her. She'd driven him to the edge. She'd saved herself because he didn't really want to harm her at all. Because he made her want to breathe and smile and do everything she could in half an hour because his beauty was more than skin deep, and she was the one with the vanity complex who should've looked more beautiful than him at that very moment but didn't.

This isn't believing in herself, not just yet. But it's close enough.

* * *

He is Juugo.

He is the boy who was hidden from the world. He encased himself in his home at the age of six and clung to his shell. He is the child who nobody wanted to have. Except even though he is monstrous, he is so very beautiful he could make you eat your heart out. What he has wrong is not self-inflicted, and all he wants to do is live. He is the boy who has mastered monstrosity, and knows how hard it is to live with yourself.

Juugo is the boy who mastered monstrosity because he has mastered hatred. When he was born, he was left to his own devices. When he was eight, he was taken to the sound by his best (and only) friend and used to create a race of beasts that were just like him. At twenty, he is a person who is avoided by anything he once loved and the thing people will see as little more than an animal before trying to slaughter him.

The best thing is, underneath the underneath like Sasuke once said; he still feels the sharp rejection of human kind every single time and it makes him feel everything.

He is Juugo. And the very worst thing to him is that people recoil from his touch, that they fear his name, that humankind has deprived him of the love that it normally so willingly shares around. There has always been the one child that became a monster and got away before it could be killed – _usually_ _the one to end up killing the last thing they love first_ – and everyone he knew always believed it would be him. He wanted it not to be all along, because he never wanted to be like this. He wanted to be the one everyone loved, even though the only remarkable thing about him was his bright red eyes and fiery hair.

And sometimes, his kindness sets him apart, and it makes him feel human.

(If only for a while, _forwhocouldloveamonster_?)

If anyone tries to take him down, he often thinks he deserves it but he'll carry on fighting anyway. He would see himself suffer before others, but not right then. When bloodlust rushed through him like pumped in drugs. So to hell with everything, everyone, and especially himself. He can't sneak around and be your dirty little secret because it would make him feel filthy; and if you stab him in the back it might set him off but he'll forgive you when you're face down in the dirt with nothing else to lose. To him, it's his own fault. If you're hurting? He's probably caused it, so he cares. Such is the way of the world, and don't you forget it.

He is Juugo, and he is a monster. Because he can't conform, no matter how hard he tries.

* * *

The chapter that kicks things off, bear with me for the build-up. A single chapter of five and a prologue down. Just a warning now, this will not have a slow build up. I cannot stand most things longer than a few chapters, I am impatient that way. So again, if you feel particularly inclined, drop me a note, because constructive critisism is given a good home and reviews are loved like nothing else. :)


	3. Bambi Eyes,

Summary: _(This is how to drink your hypocrisy down, how to become enamoured with your lies, how to live in your own skins.) This is how to love a monster. _

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Second chapter of five. Once again, thank you to those who alerted, favourites or reviewed. Also, because I am betting that at some point along writing this I will get a stupid comment from someone saying '_thispairingsuks!!!!11!'_ I am going to point out what the wonderful **Demonic Angel Clone** wrote about it: Ino/Juugo Love, Peace, and Beast. Because she is the definition of awesome, and because I could. Yes, I am very aware this is a crack pairing. This is me not caring and writing it anyway. Kisses.

Warning(s): Bad language, mentions of M rated stuff, seriously dark at points.

* * *

**Skins**

* * *

**_Bambi Eyes,_**

* * *

She is Ino.

She is turning herself inside out like an old forgotten cardigan, found months after by the owner and being made to fit the ideal once more. She is eleven in mind instead of seventeen for only a moment, and so she grasps it while she can. She's been told that there is such thing as magic although it is a long time ago now, and last night she woke up and dreamed backwards again to when life stopped.

She's not saying she ever believed, because she was always smarter. Always meaner, always faster, always best. She was the first in their year to try a hand at being a bitch, and she doesn't regret it. She can't. Maybe - _just maybe, she whispers into her pillow_ - this is why Sasuke did not fall in love with her. She is not made to work well. She is made to cause destruction, because it is what she is best at.

One day, she knows she will breathe earthquakes.

So she's not saying she ever found truth in magic. Not at all. She's always been a little bit cleverer than that. But tonight she forces her fingers to latch on to a pen limply, and attempts to dig the ink into her skin. She feels like it will remove the creases, the dead flesh, whatever remains. Just these few words, seven times over in black neatly printed lines for luck. She can almost taste the glimmer of fairy dust when she's done.

(Almost, seven was lucky for a team but _hestillleft_ and _sodidherheart_.)

So she looks at the word God over and over, smiles at it, makes it feel like home. She makes a wish. Her grin fades; she rubs away the ink as much as she can. She is seventeen, not eleven, and sometimes there is no magic left.

She is Ino, and she is human. Because humans don't believe in much.

* * *

This is magic not going right.

"It's you."

The words catch on his teeth, like he wants to offer her something but it cannot be received. It's not harsh. His words are unprotected and impromptu, and for a moment she feels recognition running through her blood. Once, she wanted to spill her thoughts down the drain for this person she barely knew. He would recycle them, make them something more. Spill them out through his actions and break them into beauty.

"Hello."

She chokes. Her friends are probably dying, but this is the boy who made her think there is more to life than having breathing as a way of living. He is large in size and bigger in heart, and he is creating bloodshed and she does not know why but she feels sick. She manages to fixate herself on his one blank red eye past the golden one, the clawed fingers, and the crooked wings sticking oddly from his back. He is deformed and passive, like her reaction has been repeated a million times. Like he expects her to want to see the ugly side. But she wants to see beauty. Even then.

"I might kill you, today."

He tells her, shrugging his shoulders. The crooked wings move with him, like they want to be noticed. Like they want her to scream and run. Like they want her to break down and cry, seeing him like this. But she has never even known his name.

"Yes. You could."

She states, as if life is that simple. Her fingers tremble, already feeling their way up the richter scale, wondering the magnitude of this moment. Today is the day she will breathe earthquakes. Today, she shakes with anticipation, will be the day she lives. He is the one to spill his blood for her, the one to make her alive. She smiles.

"But I don't want to."

He says. She chokes back a laugh. This isn't about what they want. This is about their job, this is about her being forever the patriot and protecting her country, this is about anything but personal relations or something akin to companionship. Today, she has no choice but to tear the stars down from above his head and crash the oceans against his back until it breaks. Today, she will create a man in his childish eyes.

Then a noise sounds out. A loudspeaker or something like it and the booming voice is that of the boy she thought still had her heart, encapsulated by his side in a cage of ice. Her head snaps up, and so does his. Today, they are enemies. Today, they are listening to the same voice telling them otherwise. Today, they will _**lay down the arms you bear;**_ _**we must not fight but rather join forces to destroy those who have done wrong. **_It's for the greater good, Naruto tells her later. She doesn't even try to smile and agree with this. Once again, she has had life torn away from her.

"What's your name?"

Ino finally asks, dropping the knife in her hand. He is grasping his head, feeling pain seep through his bones. When his body is again flesh and blood, again resembling something she supposes human, he looks at her for a long time before he answers. She supposes not many people care. But she does. All the little things make her almost disappointment worth it. Or something like that.

"Juugo."

He is what she had believed beautiful for so very long. Yet his name is plain and singular. It is trapped off from connection with anything else; a second name, a title, anything that made him different. She goes to offer her name, but he holds a hand up like he already knows it. She stares at him coldly, feeling as though he is even less feeling then her. Not knowing that it is quite the opposite.

"You know who I am?"

She has never given him her name. But he nods as if he is certain, and somehow she believes him. Yesterday, she threw the pen she used to write her wishes with at the wall and the plastic broke into tens of pieces. She believes at that very moment even if there is no magic left, it is surely wiped out. There is no being more than this. There is no love. There is no God. If she says it aloud convincingly enough, she tricks herself too.

"I knew who you were when we met."

It is then that she runs up to him and curves her arms around his neck almost like they are familiar. They are stretched out and probably aching, he knows this, and he also knows this is the most affection he has ever felt slipping into his skin. He was outside a beauty salon once when he was younger, waiting for his first 'carer' and he heard a woman tut saying some things were only skin deep. But she is pretty, and she is clawing her way under his skin to the bone as though she belongs there just through touch, and he knows then that things are not only skin deep. They are much deeper.

"Thank you."

She whispers, the heat of her breath blending into the deepest part of his mind as the warmth tickles his ears. Awkwardly he raises his hands, knowing that this is one person like Sasuke that he can't break and holds her to him in return. When she is pressed against him like this, he almost doesn't remember how it feels to be hurt anymore. God is in his hands, treating him with care and politely offering her words up to him as sacrifice for all she has done. He could destroy his faith so easily, and yet she entrusted it to him. Like he meant something to her. Like he was more than a monster.

When he asks Sasuke if he knows who she is that night, here is what he remembers: she had doe eyes, she makes Sasuke snap and Karin screams. The boy with the carved artistic features of a statue is just as unfeeling as the marble he is made from, and he is told never to speak of such a person again. Not asked, but more commanded. He bows his head, but later that night Karin whispers her name to him.

He is told that she is Yamanaka Ino. She is a person not to get too close to. She will take your life and use your hands to snap it into a thousand pieces that can never be collected back in quite the same arrangement again. She was once familial with a girl who Sasuke left behind, her father owned a flower shop business, and she could take minds apart. What Karin does not tell him is what he gains from her words.

Her name is just that, and nothing more. She is a person who does not really enjoy breaking others, but she does it because it makes her dream of having a heart and because she wants somebody to be just as fractured as she is. She got under Sasuke's skin too because she as almost close to him, the flower shop was where she learnt that beauty hid being empty, and taking minds apart was stopping her from rebuilding her own on unsteady grounds. He finds it strange that she can live like this, but appropriate. Books were always lined with stories of how God suffered for the good of her creations.

"You created life in me."

He mutters to himself almost silently as he rolls over in his bed, the sheets tangling around his large limbs. She may not be the one to feed, clothe or shelter him, but she is the one who he can feel will create him. She is God, he knows, and she can make anything possible with a smile and a wave of her hand. His heart is beating unsteadily at the sheer thought, and for once, he almost feels human.

This is magic not going right. This is building God with boy's dreams.

* * *

This is how to be something more.

"Don't you ever feel sorry for others?"

Juugo asks her as she washes blood from her hands down his team's communal kitchen sink. She stares with empty eyes at the monotone walls of the room, and he thinks if he reaches out and pulls her too tight cheeks she might smile. But he can't, and she doesn't anyway. Her eyelashes dip, dragging shadows along her cheeks as she shakes off the last of the water washing everything away.

"You should paint your walls a different shade."

She doesn't answer, with those words meaning little. He stares at the white, boring and dull and needing a story. Colours told you everything. Maybe he reasons, this is why she is getting as pale as when he first met her. She was ten pounds below slender back then, if not more, and he wonders if she was ever safe in mind and then if that was what made her so special. Maybe that, just maybe.

"I understand."

He whispers, and he does. She may be pale, but she has always been the brightest. Always. She has always traced her jaw with one hand, slid fingers down her slender limbs and hoped to feel a heartbeat a little more even. She has been practiced and ready for her entire life, with a perfect face and a smile to break you down before you even realised she was destroying you. With her colour, there was not even a way of seeing something so dull. If she saw something white, she'd turn her back on it. Just like it would turn its back on her, because she burned its eyes.

"Do you?"

She mutters, dragging her hands through the soft white towels Karin has purchased the day before. She streaked pink water down it. His breath hitches. She is painting something today, and it is not only the towel. She is creating a man in him with colour. She is seeping into his skin and making him feel like he could be more. But even now she intimidates him. Maybe it's the dirty way she could flail her limbs weakly, but still stop him. Or maybe it's that he believes that with those very same thin hands, she will tear down the heavens.

"Sometimes. I think."

His answer couldn't really be satisfying. It is obvious in the way she grins and showed her too white teeth, hiding secrets behind them. Maybe if he pulls all her teeth out, then she'll feel like she can tell the truth. Maybe then the lies will spill out down the drain, and he'll be left with nothing but her. Even if she was wrong, he liked the thin circles tracing her arms and the way underneath the thin flaking makeup there was probably purple bruises that are above her cheeks instead of shadows from lack of sleep. He likes the way he has been wearing a choker of fear his whole life, and she makes him feel useful. Makes him feel like he too is loved. Because he saved someone, too.

"Then you need help."

She tells him decisively, her head snapping round and her eyes glaring at him in just the right way. He could pick her up and throw her on his back and all she would be able to do would be to scream as he dragged her away. But the fresh purple dots just at the very top of her neck are what makes him stop. They could fall all the way down her body, all the old holes across her porcelain skin, but these ones were new and fresh. Something to show the harm that humanity inflicted upon its creator and it was stunning.

"It's you who needs to see a doctor."

She looks at him a moment longer before turning back, something not quite but similar to amusement in the crescent of her curved smile and her sparkling eyes. She is just distant enough from him to make him wonder about things again. When her lips were parted just like that and she looked so alone, he couldn't want to do anything but hold her and tell her things would be alright.

"But you won't make me."

Of course he wouldn't. All the countries were together once, Suigetsu once told them. It was lucky that they were ripped apart and spaced alone by sea, because that way less people were killing each other for patches of no mans land. Juugo couldn't help but think that was why people built boats and learned to swim. Maybe they liked the bloodlust too much. Maybe they were selfish. Or maybe they just wanted to see who would stop them, or how much damage they could do before everything fell apart. That's probably how he feels about her, he notices. But right then he wants to kiss her.

"No, I won't."

His mouth feels too dry. God doesn't need companionship. She has so many people willing to help her, willing to give her faith and his faith has never been brilliant. She turns around, the quirk of her voice making him flinch away. Her eyes never stop grinning though. Never. Although she's too close and he shouldn't feel like this.

"You love me, don't you?"

She asks, clinging to his shirt with her hands fisted tightly in a sudden movement. She always says things she doesn't mean, but nine tenths of the time she disguises things she does really and he's never quite sure how to answer. He feels a lump building in his throat, raw and throbbing with the force it is taking him not to look at her like this. Like even God could love something like him.

"I can't."

He answers finally, with the truth instead of – _yes of course, forever and ever because I will have faith if you reach for me_ – something like it that would have fit a little more. She nods at this, releases her grip and seems a lot more calm. Her shoulders loosen from their previous rigid stance, and she breathes lightly into his chest as she falls forward into him. Today, he was catching God, but he wasn't sure she wanted him to anymore.

"Please don't ever love me."

Juugo nods. He knows she doesn't do well with things that love her, and it's been an established fact since he first saw her screaming in the early twilight rain. Love makes her sick, and she is no fool who can feel everything still so sharp and poisonous and sinking under the bone. She does not feel like him.

He doesn't tell her he won't. He can't promise something he can't be certain of. Although it is disgusting and wrong, he cannot help but want to touch her and submerge himself in her scent and hold her and feel human. He may be a monster, but even in the darkest corner of an abyss in an icy cavern, there is something like love inside everyone. Encapsulated in even the weakest, dirtiest and ugliest of hearts. Even those of monsters.

Just because he doesn't know what it feels like, it doesn't mean that he doesn't know it exists, and when he asks Karin later she looks across the room at Sasuke silently sleeping on their living room floor in front of the fire before she mumbles something he can't quite hear. But he doesn't need to hear it to understand that these sort of things can't be put into words, and that underneath all her showiness there is something inside his only female form of companionship that yearns to be loved and he thinks Ino may possess it too underneath the underneath or her underneath, or something ridiculously confusing like that anyway. Not that he'd say that out loud. He likes her better when she makes less sense. When she's just like something he can care for.

This is how to be something more. Or at least, boy hopes so.

* * *

He is Juugo.

He is replacing the fabric on his coat of skin, taking off the pieces of material and himself that never fitted anyway and putting in newer patches of feelings created by somebody who tailored things to suit a conformed life perfectly. He is twenty in mind instead of eight once more, and he is no longer going to try and impress people with bambi eyes. He is gouging his own out and sewing buttons in their place to blind himself, and then that night he will awake in a cold sweat and wonder when he started feeling like a monster in human skin.

He is not saying he believes, but he has always been naïve. He's never read a fairytale in his life because the words are squiggly and he's illiterate anyway, but he was always easily led. Always gullible, always soft, always the easiest pleased. He would regret it, but he has only himself to blame. Maybe – _just maybe, he tells himself when he is far enough gone_ – this is why he cannot bring himself to crave love any longer. He is tired of that. But he'll keep on believing, because false hope is what he is best at installing.

One day, he knows he'll love a human.

So he's not saying he ever really believed in anything or anyone. Just that he wants to. Because when people asked, he used to tell the truth about who he was but he doesn't anymore. Tonight, he looks in the mirror and sees smudged ink on his shirt that he isn't quite sure how got there and sees the word God printed unto him like a placeholder for something he doesn't quite understand. He can almost taste the lack of equilibrium about the word, the way it could easily tip off into his skin instead and carve itself there like it was true. But it's not. He doesn't like the truth anymore.

(When people ask, he tells them he's _nothingmuchreally_ and _whatdoesitmatter_.)

But he looks at the printed word God over and over, smiles, tastes the familiarity of it on his quiet tongue as it drips off to form a word a million times until he feels it fits just right. He is eight, not twenty, and sometimes people just don't look for the truth hard enough.

He is Juugo, and he is a monster. Because he dares to believe.

* * *

The next chapter is the one where things start getting flipped up and over, where the pulses get rushing, where everything begins to fall into place and we get a nasty nemesis in more places than one. So this is it for the build up, I hope you are ready for the madness that is this pairing embodied. Once more, if you feel particularly inclined, drop me a note, because constructive criticism is given a good home and reviews are loved like nothing else. :)


	4. Mirror Kissing,

Summary: _(This is how to drink your hypocrisy down, how to become enamoured with your lies, how to live in your own skins.) This is how to love a monster. _

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Number three of five. Thank you to those who alerted, favourites or reviewed. Now, in reference to the last chapter (hooray!) I did get a stupid comment, but not about the pairing. Rather, someone saying **'How does it feel like reviewing your own work?'** and I have to wonder who the hell would do that, bearing in mind it defeats the object of reviewing and secondly he fact that it was anonymous also said a lot, as well as it being grammatically incorrect. Silly people. You are most hilarious. I suppose just because nobody wants to read your classics, you decided to be childish, yes? Most wonderful. Now we have got that over with, I am going to point out my happiness at not getting any other stupid comments and be like **'Guys, seriously, I love you'**, so thanksies!

Warning(s): Bad language, mentions of M rated stuff, seriously dark at some points.

* * *

**Skins**

* * *

_**mirror kissing,**_

* * *

She is Ino.

She is afraid of more than anyone will ever know. She is worried that her flesh on flesh and vanity complexed ways will turn away and become just another part of the past she doesn't want to relieve. She's sickened by he thought that she's just going to be another example to make the youngest students they teach about the screw ups cry. She's wanting to be more than whatever she is just because she will be the proof left behind that not everybody is happy and that some things just never change.

(She's not as beautiful on the inside, and honest to whatever _sheisnotokay_!)

And this is just a body.

So she'll fill it with corrosive nectar and watch herself burn out brighter. She'll swear until this day that the only time she actually ever felt alive was when a man chased by demons ran his fingers up her cagey ribs with his the right side of wrinkled slept in clothes being torn away to reveal nothing but whatever he really was.

She's as fucked as they come when he tries to smooth out her edges. But he is just a broken bird of a boy who says he isn't a masochist although he likes her, and she is just a sharp eyed empty girl who in-between the lines on every new notebook at midnight writes _oh God he's so beautiful_. But only at first. _Only at first_.

Her hip bones are like knives and they tear at his flesh, stab him whilst he etches his body into hers that once. And it's only then; when he's broken down and as useless and pathetic as she ever was, that she likes to think every so often that he was the loneliest man in the world to ever turn to somebody that likes to destroy.

She is Ino, and she is human. Because she tears things down.

* * *

This is how to feel sick.

"Who are you?"

There has been a downpour all day, and she can't bring herself to look in the messy puddle mirrors she jumped in so she could smash them. That way, she thought she wouldn't have to look. There is dirt streaking up her legs and her umbrella is hanging from a tree but she can't hide herself or stare at inanimate objects when he's around. Juugo has sun kissed skin and bloody eyes and she can't help but want to look at him forever.

"I don't know."

She doesn't. But she has an inkling he does. When Shikamaru speaks about her now it feels like she has no idea who they're talking about or if what they are speaking about it true. It's gotten to the point where she avoids them altogether, because she doesn't know what it feels like to have an identity anymore and him reminding her she existed once is like pretending she's not uncomfortable in her own skin.

"How does it feel?"

He asked gingerly. She'll tell him anything just to be complete, so she doesn't know why he's so awkward but she finds it kind of sweet. For him she'd do anything, and it was cliché to say so but nobody ever meant it but her.

"Taste it."

She tells him, pivoting as she spins into him and reaches higher to catch his mouth with her own. Since she was twelve she has had veins full of vanity and sold conformity along with pockets full of enhancements and fakes for little more than smiles. But she's bored with the way the grins make her feel and the way that sometimes she feels utterly alone after all anyway. Except with him.

"You asked me not to love you."

He pulls away, but he grips his hands around her wrists with incredible strength at the same time like he wants to hold her even if it means holding her away. Sometimes, she thinks he's just like her and he's forgotten how to do things again like she did with morning basics like tying her shoes. Or maybe she was over thinking, and the only thing in those super massive red holes that are his eyes show nothing more than what she wants to see in them.

"Don't get me wrong, I don't need you to."

He flinches as she murmurs. She just wants him more than she's ever wanted anybody. His hands gradually slackened their grip, shaking as if wary. He raises his right hand to touch her cheek with a calloused palm, and she can't help but think he's petrified of bending her so far she breaks. She supposes in one way, it's not the bending that will snap her. She's always been two steps away from ordinary, and she's known since long ago that she's used to him but not love. Because this is not love. Nothing like it.

"But what f I need you? What then?"

He asks. She smiles a little too brightly at this. There is always need for her. Everyone always likes to think so. They like to think they can make her a million shades of fixed, except some people got fed up along the way and others just gave up altogether with a sorry like they meant it. But she's so young, and she's always been desperate to have everything. No, this is not love, she reasons. This is a boy and a girl and a man and a woman and nothing. They are just people who want to touch like they know affection instead of just having their elbows knock awkwardly a few centimetres below where their hearts should be. Love has always been a foreign word she can associate with neither of them. He is tragically beautiful and she is beautifully tragic, and the lines can't be blurred. Not this time.

"You don't."

She tells him decisively, capturing his lips again. This time, he can't stop. She supposes he has never known a girl with soft-glowing ice white skin, or little strands of hair sticking to her forehead, or anyone like her. That would explain why his hands were awkward against her back, like he was the teenager. But this is the sort of relationship where he will rise from the forest floor covered in sweat and dirt and sex, and where he's falling asleep next to her and waking up alone.

He can't use it as reasoning later, but he thinks maybe – _only just maybe_ – this is why he has torn everything he fed her from her stomach: he loves her. He likes her long matchstick legs and the way she could be better with weight but probably won't ever be, and he likes her bright blue eyes and her real smile which is fucking killer, he's sure. He is the flame. She is the oil. She will always burn brighter, no matter what.

He thinks this is why he grips her just a little too tight, so tight he can feel her retaliation of nails digging half moons into his back and this is why each of her ribs fits tightly against his chest so sharply, almost like they are leaving imprints. This is why when he presses himself against the slick skin of her stomach, she tugs his hair and this is why when she arches her back he can't stop himself. This is why, he tells himself, a hundred million reasons why other than love.

Then when he wakes up the next day, battered and bruised from the night before with bloody teeth mark cuts on his shoulder blade that he supposes must have cut into her a little too much, and she's not there, he can't reason anymore.

He loves her –_helovesherhelovesherhelovesher_- and she doesn't know the meaning of the word. But he shakes himself awake and turns to look at the tree behind him, and looks at her invisible handprint from some time ago and can feel her breathing a little too heavily, and knows that just possibly someday he might make her. Even if it hurts. He might prefer her crappy and broken like him, with her little whims seeping into his skin and marking themselves for memory more than she'd ever know, but there's only so much he can take. But unlike everyone else, he's not going to give up. Not this time.

This is how to feel sick. But still, hold your stomach. Nobody else will do it for you.

* * *

This is how to shed the skin of belief.

"You left."

He tells her. She doesn't need to reply with the fact she knows. But the statement, he hopes, will be enough to make her react. Instead, she looks up from the counter where she is making pretty things look prettier, and looks at him blankly.

"So I did."

It's not quite a – _what did you expect_ – apology. Or anything for that matter. She's determined to convince him that she's just another messed up girl from that moment, and he can almost taste the bitterness on her lips and every lie she wants to feed him being tucked behind her bed of teeth cosily.

"Don't you ever feel sorry for others?"

He asks her, for the second time, trying not to let his voice crack in pain. He has always been the sensitive man who let himself get dragged along despite his strength. He has always been the one to avoid the pretence of the world they live in. He has always believed in her. But not right then, he doesn't. Not when she looks at him so wordlessly. Like he wouldn't care anyway. Like he wasn't ever anything more than anyone else to her.

"No."

She answers quietly. Why should she feel sorry for those who had turned against her? He didn't even want to hear her say it. He didn't want her to know the way her fingers carved beneath his skin and burned through to his bone, to know the way she pressed herself against him made him feel like she belonged, to know the way she made him feel almost like he could be human too, if only when she was around.

"Then what is this?"

He whispers, watching as she delicately stacks piles of flowers into vases. He'll never know, but she'll burn the heads off each and every one once he's gone. All it takes is a little fire to start her off, and with her there is no stopping. There is no going back. There is no life before her. The worst thing about her is like having her is like having a broken heart, he thinks then. You can't ever remember what it felt like before.

"Something like religion."

She answers. He almost laughs, but he doesn't know how too. He has always been too kind, and she has always been too wicked to accept such a thing from him without consequence. He has always been soft and naïve, and he never believed naivety was a good thing until she told him so, but he finds her words almost true.

"You can give it up."

He finishes for her. She doesn't even nod in reply, but he tries to understand. He is the one who thought her a God. But she has never believed in such a thing. She doesn't have anything but a mirror kissing face and an empty shell of beauty, and faith means nothing to her except for a word which is like a blank canvas. It needs to be full and offering before she can ever even look at something so mindless. Later, he'll find out something that will shock him to the bone. She is an atheist – _and always has been, ever since before she met him_ – but she likes the idea of belief. Even if she doesn't have it. Sasuke will tell him this, and he'll want to cry. She's a card carrying non-believer, and yet he'd believe. He'd do it forever if she wanted him to. Because she was more than God. Just as he turns to leave, she says something that shakes him to the very core.

"You made a God in me."

It's only then he turns and smashes his hand into a pot. She looks startled and bites her lip inwards. She would be stupid to think she could use such words. She didn't know faith, or reason, on anything even remotely akin to love and even so she had managed to steal his heart quite unlike anyone ever had.

"For you, there is no God!"

He can feel rage surging through his body, although he knows it to be pointless when around her. She's been able to tear his mind apart from the very first second he met her with what seemed like a basic form of ease, and maybe that was why she had ensnared him with little more than a passing whim. She has always been more than anyone. She has always dared to go a step further. She has wanted him.

"No, there isn't, because I believe in myself!"

She shot back loudly. He is momentarily shocked by her outburst, and feels the anger sliding away. He has never heard her scream. He had heard her whisper, smile, moan, anything but actually raise her voice and it is this which stuns him. This is the girl with touches like barbed wire; if you touch her it will always draw blood. But she has never exploded – _she burns brighter than anythinganyonehim still though _– and it shakes him. There is fire in her vagabond eyes, and he can't grin at getting what he wanted. She is showing she's no heartless nomad. But she's doing it in all the wrong ways, and when she falls to pieces again from trying so hard he knows he'll cry as he pulls her back together again. He wants to and he will. But perhaps not this time.

"What makes you is those who love you, and you don't believe in them."

Because this time, she didn't want saving. Even if the hurt in her reaction failed her. Her head snaps backwards sharply as though he has slapped her with this utter conviction in his words. She has never believed in people, for she has never needed to. She has always been behind her callousness and her harsh words, but he never entrusts that she has meant them until this moment when she is so furious he isn't quite sure what she is anymore unless she is something more disgusting than him.

"What would you know of love? Those who would turn their backs on us, leave us to suffer, who would gladly watch us come to harm. They are not those who love us, and they never have been. I do not need their companionship, and if that is the way you think I certainly do not need you!"

She doesn't want him. Not anymore. Her venom and pain say enough. She has forgotten what it is like to feel, but perhaps just now the feeling of something she tried to stow away is returning and this time when she hides it again there will be no returning it to where had supposed it belonged all along. She doesn't want a heart, not anymore, and it is with knowing this he turns his back on her once more.

"We both knew it, once. Or maybe I was wrong about you."

At this, he thinks she truly smiles. The beast she has retrieved from inside gives him the brightest, most beautiful smile he has ever seen and he thinks that this is the thing which will make this all just that little bit harder. It'll beg him to stay just that little bit longer, and tell her how she broke his heart. But now is not the time. She just wants to show him how wrong people can really be, and how she can make anyone – _God damn fucking anyone even him _– do just what she wants them to until they know she's more than they bargained for. She's not just a pretty face and soft touch. She's more. So much more, like God. Except God, he will always believe, can't exist with her being created. Nobody is cruel enough to give free will to such a thing like this girl.

"I never asked for your approval."

She says coldly. It's like she's putting her soul on display and waiting for him to rub his feet on it and break her spine, almost wanting someone to take a hammer to her hands and break every single finger so she can't hide her face any longer. She wants him to see that this time, she doesn't care. It's like he can have what's left of her, Sasuke can collect chunks of her to fill up his past if he really wants to one day, and somewhere in between all her pain she's expecting to throw herself back on her feet like it all means nothing. Not that anybody ever did. Not to her. Really.

"But you've always wanted it."

He says. Sometimes, people don't like to use the word goodbye. He's not one of the people who think it leaves a final, stale taste. He just doesn't find it fitting. He knows he can never leave her. But he can give her these words like a wrapped up gift, and in the future she might tear off the paper and see beneath everything. If he could see her then, he was certain she'd be biting back a laugh. Instead of turning around, he keeps on going and lets the door shut behind him. He doesn't want to see her. This isn't the last time he'll have the chance, so he has no reason to.

This is how to shed the skin of belief. This is losing faith and painting girl black.

* * *

He is Juugo.

He has never been afraid. He can't write but his somewhat friend told him once that in the kanji of the letters 'run' and 'fight' there is only one line of difference. This is why he never backs down. There is a fine line of change between courage and cowardice. He's wanted to change for a while now from being whatever he is, but he knows that can never be so he's given up on being something more because when he was young he wanted to be a doctor. Now he finds it ironic.

(Why would a medical student cure cancer when they could amputate hatred, _hedoesn'tknow_.)

And this is just his skin.

So it doesn't matter who he really is. He is just a single name, no title or lie or fake loyalty hidden in a word. Just himself. But he'll swear until the end of forever that he only felt like his fit into this flesh was when a woman trapped by expectations dragged her nails across his already aching chest where his heart should be with her that side of more than skinny body seeking comfort in whatever she wanted him to be.

He's not ever going to give her it though. Because she is just a wide circling mess of a girl who will always return to the start once more no matter how much he tries to provide an ultimatum, and he is just a boy who in-between the crease of skin on his fingers writes _oh God it's love_. But only as long as he can. _Only forever_.

She's burned under the bone with her touch and made sure she remained since day one, making sure he can't forget. Not once. And it only then; when he finds himself as blank and unknowing as her and as human looking as she ever was, that he likes to think she had to be the most lost person in the world to turn to someone born a monster.

He is Juugo, and he is a monster. But he isn't quite sure of himself anymore.

* * *

I directly avoided smuttiness. I am not sure if that was a good or bad move, but this is a T people. Not an M. Though I am not sure if it should be, I am thinking M rated works are rather more graphic. Things have kicked off now, but I am not sure whether to like this or not. I know some people will not, because ohemgee this pairing makes no sense. Oh well. For the fourth time, if you feel particularly inclined, drop me a note, because constructive criticism is given a good home and reviews are loved like nothing else. :)


	5. and Heart on Sleeve

Summary: _(This is how to drink your hypocrisy down, how to become enamoured with your lies, how to live in your own skins.) This is how to love a monster. _

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Number four of five, not including the epilogue. Again, thanks to those who did all the sort of stuff I could list with a ton of praise. On a random note, my hair is no longer red. It is pink. Mmm pink. It is almost as good as sitting on the sofa with strawberry cake and watching Lord of the Rings, then going to an awesome party.

Warning(s): Bad language, mentions of M rated stuff, seriously dark at some points.

* * *

**Skins**

* * *

_**and heart on sleeve.**_

* * *

She is Ino.

She sells conformity. She packs it neatly and ships it to her nearest and dearest, and she's never had a qualm about it; not once. But today she feels like she's falling asleep and waking up tired. It feels like she's falling asleep and waking up in the cold. It feels like, no, she really is falling asleep. And she's waking up alone. And he's gone.

It feels like falling asleep and waking up and _fallingforhim_.

Today she's tasting the nectarine of failed relationships, smudging the lipstick stains on the wishes away because she knows there's nothing left to lose. She can do nothing better than drip poison under flesh, and wait for the shiniest new doll to slip up. She can see in the bathroom mirror that she's fading.

She's going to die young. She still has nightmares about bloodstained eyes and he was just a person. He always left her feeling empty, because he could be anyone and she was beautiful and that should have meant something because it always had but right now it doesn't. When she was twelve she tucked stones inside of her socks to weigh her down because her father called her his little angel and to this day she knows she's never taken flight because she never wanted to plunge from the tip top of the tallest building to see if she could be free. Even if she entertained the idea, once.

(She's never fallen. She's never had to, and that's why she survives.)

Today, she is crying on a park bench at midnight with her head in her waxen white lonely hands, and turning her back on the dead bird on the ground. She's never been a good medic. They can't expect her to save something else when she can't even save herself. They can't expect her to give wings when she had none of her own all along. They can't expect her to love, but she thinks she just might.

Today, she almost feels like God. She too can snap the necks of children, and find delight in the hollow remains of broken birds and broken boys. She too can ignore prayers and reply with only silence. She too doesn't think about the people who don't know where to put their faith, except her one special little follower. The one she cares for too much. _The meek_, the words form on her tongue to convince herself, _will inherit nothing_.

She is Ino, and she is human. Because tomorrow, she's not quite sure who she'll be.

* * *

This is how to kill a monster.

"This is just a mission."

Ino tells Juugo and him. It's been six months. But she still doesn't know who she's kidding. Red and black eyes both fix on her, and the latter pair seem almost mirthful. She wonders if Naruto knew when he told them to go that things weren't just that simple, that sometimes things don't fit together and things don't always end happily ever after. She stares at the beautiful one until her eyes water, and then turns away. This is neither the time nor place to wish him dead.

"So use yourself, just to know you're beautiful."

Sasuke mutters coldly. She's rarely heard him speak before this. What she can remember is being twelve and being enamoured and thinking that maybe one day he could love her too. She can still envision the perfect curve at the corner of his lips, that although was probably forced it was the most stunning thing she'd ever seen in his crooked way. What she is not sure she knows is his current lament, and the way he is ever so arrogant even about the littlest things.

"Learn to keep up then."

She sneers, and in one quick moment pressing her palm on his marble face so it smarted. He looks surprised, and Juugo straightens from his hunch to stare at them both fixatedly. She supposes he is waiting for Sasuke to retaliate, and she can't say she blames him. The idea of Sasuke fighting back is something she relishes. If she could take down him, she could take down anyone, and even if she never regained what she lost from him it would mean little. She'd just be where she started again.

"Learn that you can't control me, and that I'm the leader."

Status before anything. So like him. The air of a prince yet this boy held none of the dignity. Oh, she never wanted to control him either. It'd be best if he knew that. She was the one he left to wilt in the shadows, growing weary whilst tied away. Not Sakura, not Naruto or anyone else. Just her, and she'd never forget the bitter taste of Sakura's tears as they slid down her sickly pale skin like he ever meant something.

"She can't."

Juugo suddenly interrupts, before Ino can come out with another snide reply. Juugo finally has her attention. She looks at him heavily, and wonders what it feels like to have the weight of the world on your shoulders. To be put in a box like a rat, left with two snakes to claw for his affinity. She has never been as strong as Sasuke. But she is quick and light and takes advantage of the smallest openings. She will be victorious, even if it costs her whatever she has left to give.

"Caution is a wise thing, Juugo."

She murmurs. It could prove useful when dealing with beasts. A fleeting half-smile appeared on his face as he looked at her. Six months and it felt like forever since he'd seen her. But even so, she knew he had not forgotten. Neither had she. She remembers how he built her into a God, and for only this she is thankful; for who would want him? She could not own such an innocent animal.

"I anticipate the safety of your open doors, flower girl."

He thinks nothing more of her than this. Sasuke is careful and decisive, and he thinks her to impudent and childish although he knows of what she can do. This is the reason, she decides, that she will be able to bring him to his knees.

"Stop. This will only cause unwanted pain."

It was said as a request rather than a command, and underneath the dulcet softness of his seemingly pleading tone she could feel that something was not quite right. Sasuke huffs, turns his back on them and begins to walk away. Ino looks up at Juugo with glassy eyes that anyone could see through, and his startling red eyes downturned to meet her. She didn't need a knight in shining armour, with a white horse and a turreted golden palace, and she certainly didn't need protection. Rather, she thought, he did.

"I embrace pain like needles, and rejoice in each pierce."

Curling her hands around his neck because it made her feel familiar, and whispering this in his ear, she could feel him freezing beneath her touch. Ice Queen was a nice title, she decided. She wanted it a lot. Not only was she so heartless, but she knew how to turn people into shells of their former self. That was why she would always be able to return to him, and smile flippantly in his sharp angled face.

"Then why are you holding something that cannot harm you?"

Juugo replies. Sasuke is going to get far ahead of them, and he does not want to be alone with this girl. She is kind underneath her cover of beauty, under her false skin of conformity to such beauty he could never aspire to have, and whilst he misses the way she could almost make him feel loved he has learnt his lesson. His heart may still belong to her, but to such a pretty little thing it means nothing at all. She will never love him in return.

"There is still love in your eyes."

Delicate words pressed into the shell of his ear from pink lips. She pulled herself away, and he did nothing to stop her. Nothing to retort. He could not lie. But he finds it almost sad that her voice was so frail, like he was her last hope. She was looking for affection in all the wrong places, and she'd only end up trapped. He wants to say something a lot like _– Idon't_ – yes.

"Don't fall for him."

Juugo murmurs instead, reaching out to touch her and then thinking better of it. He is wise enough now to know that he cannot break her tiny bones, but he is smarter than to offer comfort to the damned. She will never listen, and he knows this, but a smile flits across her face like she cares for a second and he feels weak again. She can never care, her reminds himself, all she needs is self assurance and she doesn't love you and she never will. No matter how beautiful and human she might be. She'll build him up just to tear him down, and he can still remember every little moan she gave and each and every time she made his heart burn so much it hurt like it was easy to do.

"Love is an emotion banned from your heart."

She too turns, walking in the same direction as Sasuke. He can feel tears and imagines her smart response. He knows tears don't suit his beastly face. He knows he's ugly. He knows he'll never be able to have her. He knows that he shouldn't love her, and that he should be filled with abominable repulsions and repugnant lies she'd be better at making up for him, but he does. She can make him cry. She can watch him cry. She can wipe tears away with her lips.

This is how to kill a monster: make him love.

* * *

This is how to forsake humanity.

"You'll die."

Ino whispers. It isn't a question, but more of a statement, and Juugo doesn't have the heart to answer her. She's always seemed delicate. Not the sort of delicate in the way that just anyone could stick their hand under her flesh and rearrange her bones to be grotesque, or the sort where she would brush her hair back of the morning behind a straw hat and wear floral print dresses on the veranda, or the sort of delicate that had bony white fingers that curled themselves to hide only hurt. She is the sort of delicate where she is pretty and so very easily breakable, with blood smeared between the dip in between her lips where she bit it too hard and wide eyes like a doll. She is the sort of delicate which he's always been a bit weary of touching, although he knows he can't hurt her. Afraid. Always too frightened to. Because in one flash of pearly white teeth she'd hide it and just be nearly alive again.

"Yes."

Her lips draw thin. She's the sort of girl who it's too easy to love, and she knows it. She's the one you will always answer the way they want. But not today. He's always supposed she'd never love him, and he knows it's true on some part because he may prefer her as she is with her dreamscape smile and lost eyes but she can never love things that aren't beautiful at all. She liked to pretend she had shallow depths.

"Don't."

Her voice was sharp. Like it was a command. He liked to think that when he came back, her eyes would be glazed with salt and his would be bloodshot and somewhere in between her running and his steady plod they'd collide and everything would just fit. But this wasn't a jigsaw and they didn't work. And he wasn't coming back.

"Do you believe in God?"

He answered with a question. He knows she never had. She'd told him she believed in herself, and he'd shouted like he meant it. She was the sort of girl who thought herself too smart to talk to an imaginary friend. But her see through eyes shot up, and her skin was as pale as a ghost, and she smiled flittingly.

"He does too many bad things to be believed."

He pauses for a moment. She had to be loneliest person he'd ever seen, and for a second he wondered if the person he had belief in was just as alone; and if she ever really meant anything she said at all.

"It's we who do bad things."

She leans forward, creasing his white bedsheets ever so slightly and looking at him with her head tilted to one side crookedly. As if to say just stop; drop everything, don't do this. You know it's not worth the asking price. But she doesn't use words to help others, she never has; and he doesn't want her to lie although he knows she's good at it.

"Yes. I suppose it is the monsters."

She grins airily. He feels his blood surge through his body, although he knows she didn't mean it like that. She always saw herself as worse, not that she seemed to care about it. He's always believed she could never be such a thing. She's too heartbreaking to be something so ugly, and he'll believe that until she takes away every scrap of feeling he has left.

"Then why do you want me to stay?"

Her unabashed look slips. She falters with her face drawn in shock. She sits up on his bed, kneeling as if to make a prayer before beckoning him near. She pulls him close, but only close enough so he could smell her shampoo and feel the muscles in her face very slightly pull more into a frown than he'd ever seen on her.

"You're not a monster."

With those words, he felt his breath hitch. He raises his hands and felt the bones in her back shift beneath his touch. The way they caved in was almost scary. But he had worse wings, ugly appendages that stuck out in a misshapen blur as he thirsted for blood. It's not a lie, but he can't say he likes those words. Last time she made him feel like he could be like her, she lacerated the last scraps of his conformity and made him fall in love. Loving something like her was already easy enough with the pain.

"It depends if monsters can love."

He feels her involuntary jerk at this, but continues to hold her although she starts to struggle a little. If he wanted to, he could pin her down right there and rip her to shreds. As long as her hands couldn't move, she couldn't hurt him. Of that he was almost sure. Even so, he can't feel the bloodlust and if he did she was in too close range to be able to change and prove her wrong. He tells himself this is the reason that she is still alive.

"Sasuke did. He loves me."

He hisses at this. _Look where it left him and you both_, he stops himself from saying. _Everyone has learnt not to challenge you, little miss seductress_. _Everyone but me_. It took her that mission and another two days to make him love her. It took Sakura a month to get over this fact. It took Sasuke another one to realise that she never really cared for him at all. It took him much less than all of this to notice she wasn't really bothered about any of the fuss created by it in the slightest.

"What about me?"

He can't stop himself from muttering. He knows she is getting tired. He can feel her nails digging into his skin frantically, as if she's afraid of being near him and he can't help but want to laugh at this. Karin always said he, the one who couldn't control himself back then, was the gentle one. The kind one with a sweet smile and a bigger heart than his large size. But he finds it harder every day, seeing this one girl. She gives him control, but only at the price of what small amount of care he has left.

"You're different."

It's only then he lets go, and she falls back into his white sheets gasping. Her skin under his touch had been becoming a not so pretty shade of yellow, as he could then see, and the areas where her ribs stuck out under her rolling up shirt as she felt them tenderly were already tinged slightly purple.

"I've never meant anything to you."

He is certain of this. He always has been. But her eyes are filling with tears for the first time he's ever seen, and she looks so hopeless there is a lump growing in his throat and he can feel his own eyes stinging. He'd cry all her tears, if she asked. Her lips are quivering and she is shaking and he doesn't know what to do but fling himself forward and hold her, even though she doesn't want to be held. She recoils from it, shooting up and backing against the wall without looking at him.

"I wanted you to."

He doesn't have the heart to tell her there is a difference between having and wanting, between making love and sex, between as they are and as they might have been if he were a little less inhuman and she were a little more feeling. She knows already without him breaking the silence.

"But I didn't."

He replies. She rubs her face and drags the running water mascara lines across her, gets the thick black under her nails. Dirt. To her, everything was the same. It all meant nothing at all. She is heaving deep breaths and she can't stop the tears from flowing, but she still forces herself to manage sobering words because nobody can see her looking like this.

"Yes. Yes, you did."

With this, she forces herself to her feet and leaves. He's not going to stop her. The only thing he can taste in his dry mouth is the way her cold body pressed on his chest and he hurt her. He always hopes she never stops holding on and living. But she is so glittering and flippant that he cannot ask her to stay.

This is how to forsake humanity: fall in love with a monster.

* * *

He is Juugo.

He has never been able to enjoy anything that would bend and break just to please another. He can see the beauty in the breakdown, the prettiness in the centre of the snap, the quirk in the way it'd pain the person just to smile after it. But he'll never love the way it hurts more than anything, and the way that the very worst thing isn't even the way it's always for the sake of love or that she's conforming and hiding but he wears his heart on his sleeve. But today it feels like he's falling asleep and waking up crooked. It feels like he's falling asleep and waking up worse than anything has ever felt. It feels like, no, he really is falling asleep. And he's waking up alone. And she's gone.

No, the worst part is, the way that when you have a broken heart, you can't ever really remember _whatitfeltlikebefore_.

Today, he's rubbing his eyes at four in the morning and smudging printed ink marks of God from an almost lovers hands away until there is nothing left of them but his memory. Nothing left of them but her, and she's not going to be proof for long.

He is dying young. He is slipping into a crumpled heap, keeled over like a dead spider and just as insignificant. She always left him feeling empty, because she needed something to fill herself with and his dying wishes were all she had left to go by. When he was twelve he had blood slipped from his body whilst he was surrounded by chalk lines to hold him back. Now, he knows they're going to hold him in. Box him up into a space like his blood will help them blame somebody for what has happened. To this day he knows that even now nobody would miss him because he never thought she actually meant anything in the slightest no matter what because he was nothing at all. Even if he liked the idea of being human.

(He is just an empty ghost of himself and he likes that it's because of her.)

Today, he is walking past the park bench at one and feeling that he is late although he can't say why it is exactly that he is so out of time. There is a bird in the dirt with a lopsided head that ended quicker than he did; snapping the tiny neck ended its suffering quicker, and whoever did it he found strange. It would be better to save. He was crimson coated and his smile was fading and he could barely breathe, and he could feel his arm split further when he moved it but he crouched down anyway and cradled the cold animal. He is thinking this is for the best, and he doesn't want to see how empty its eyes are because her eyes are always empty and he liked to think he could see her one last time.

Today, he almost feels like God. He too can pour his final breath into a cracked rib being and make it take flight again, and find delight in the way it spreads its wings almost like she will do one day. He too can repair what others cannot and smile when he's in so much pain he can't actually see it anymore but he can feel it and he doesn't mind that this is the only thing left. He too doesn't think about the people who don't know where to put their faith, because he's not done. Not just yet. Not while he can hear her running and screaming and pouring everything down into him like her thoughts going down a drain. Sorry, she's been in and out of psychiatric wards and she guesses it's got to her and she is the first to run and she can't cry and she's so fucking sorry it hurts. The one he cares for too much, the Agag to his Saul but so much more than a single defiance. _Above all else_, he whispers with a roaring head and burnt tongue, _guard thy heart_.

He is Juugo, and he is human. Because he's in pieces and in breakdown and in love.

* * *

I know I am mean. Cliffhanger, renewal, something quite akin to affection. Last chapter, next. If you want to know what happened with Sasuke and Ino, then tough. I might do a side oneshot to it explaining, but I probably never will because I am far too lazy. Though your comments on what it could have been are most welcome. For the fifth time, if you feel particularly inclined, drop me a note, because constructive criticism is given a good home and reviews are loved like nothing else. :)


	6. Now try again, in your own skin

Summary: _(This is how to drink your hypocrisy down, how to become enamoured with your lies, how to live in your own skins.) This is how to love a monster. _

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Final chapter before epilogue. Love to all those people who have supported this, and love to people who are closet crack pairing fans. You need to step out in some new shoes, my lovelies. It is much more fun.

Warning(s): Bad language, mentions of M rated stuff, seriously dark at some points.

* * *

**Skins**

* * *

_**Now try again, in your own skin.**_

* * *

She is Ino.

It is Monday. She is no more than her name; and her name will always be a thick gash on a weary heart. With forgiveness and just a little time, people like to think she'll be gone. Maybe one day, she will be; but for now she'll carve herself into the soft beating flesh over and over. Just to ensure that in some way, she is still with them. That this time, it really might be love if she wishes for it hard enough.

It is Tuesday. There is no water but she can feel her eyes like the ocean. She knows what it's like to wear real scars amongst the false, what it feels like not to know anything worth knowing. She's sorry she's just a shadow of what all these people should have had, sorry because she's shivering and weak and useless all over again. She's sorry because she's waiting outside the hospital door knowing that he's seen who she really is, and he can't offer any words when he's locked up and ill because of her. He'd struggle anyway, her broken boy. He wouldn't even be able to begin.

(It is Wednesday. Not even he can console the loneliest girl in the world.)

It is Thursday. He makes her try and sound like she can manage when he calls her, and she stands there on the other end of the wire hoping it'll be him every time she hears it ringing whilst sifting through old letters she never meant for him to receive. Then when it isn't him she feels like her runaway heart is stuck on repeat and she's sick of this tiredness and everything about this. He might not ever want to speak to her again and he might be even more useless than her one day, but she'll live through it. She'll believe in him more than she ever believed in anything else. Because even though he can't begin, he can always try to find an end.

It is Friday. She realises she's only lonely because she _neverhadhimbefore_.

It is Saturday. He's barely breathing but he's still there. Sometimes she likes to think she could walk in there and look at him, but it'll feel like he's clinging to her ribcage all over again. It'll feel like his bloody hands streaking crimson down her ghostly skin like the blood of some dead animal she couldn't help but want to save. But she's questioning how. It's like how flowers trust the sun so blindly, and one day that light will just disappear and it'll be like they were never loved.

It is Sunday. Perhaps tonight she will dream that she is a deer, startled by his headlights. Like she will stand there, just waiting for him to crush her. Like she will leap in front of his fury and scream for him to just end this. But he can't do that, not anymore.

It is Monday again, and she enters his room. She sits down with bruised arms and knows he's always fancied the colour purple, just like her, and she waits for him to wake up and know she's the only thing there. That he's all she has left.

She is Ino, and she is a monster. Because she can't pretend like everyone else, not anymore.

* * *

This how to hide in human skin.

"I want to be your Jane Doe."

She whispers as he opens his eyes weakly, and hopes he hearts her. She likes to think that he'll make her unwanted, forgotten and untouchable more than she has ever been. But he does the exact opposite. It's like she's asking him to make her feel beautiful, like he's the only one who can.

"Are you ok?"

It's the first thing he's said in a week. His flesh is broken to pieces because of her and talking probably is making even more pain surge through his body. Yet he only ever cared about her. This time, he doesn't know what she's talking about. But he wants to. Maybe one day she'd be able to look at him and smile like she used to, without anything slipping – _even a heartbeat or a tongue or the biggest lie of all _– and tell him she was fine. That she always was. That she couldn't be upset when she couldn't feel it.

"No, I'm not. I want to cry until it doesn't feel like having been torn in two anymore. I'm the furthest thing from ok that I've ever been and it's entirely your fault."

But he makes her feel. He makes her feel so very much and it's crushing and biting and as beautiful as him all at once. And when she says this it's like he doesn't even notice his torn flesh that he went out to get because of her, or the way his cheekbones are both bruised so purple it's like she's smacked makeup across his skin, or the way there is the blackest burn marks spread across his fingers that she's ever seen. Because he doesn't even care. He just smiles like it means nothing and tells her what she needs.

"Everything might not be alright."

But he's breathing; he's god damn breathing and that's all that matters because it means he's not dead. Her eyes are sad and she feels crooked and wrong but he's alive and it's the most fucking beautiful thing.

"That's good. Alright never suited me."

They were never the light show; they were at the end of the meteor shower, with no stardust left behind. But that was ok, as long as he was there. She wants to ask why they are alone in this, why they are just the stains of hands rather than something that meant more. But she can't quite get it out, so she likes to think he gets it without her ever saying.

"I'm alright."

He lies. He has to. She looks at him, almost forgetting what it's like to look into those bright crimson hell-seeing eyes and feel like there's something more than just being like this. Sometimes she bruises her fingers on mirrors when she smashes them to pieces, on strings of ribbon to tie her hair like some sort of butchered queen.

"You're never alright, so please stop lying."

Ino said, seeming to know fully well what she just told him. She'd show him every mistake she ever made if it meant he'd stop saying he was fine, and she'd let him feel her heart that had been scraped with barbed wire and the homemade stitches on her outer shell.

"I'm not made for you."

She blinks, takes a sharp intake of breath. He isn't like before. He isn't her broken hearted bird boy, and she isn't lovely and stable and precious to him. Not anymore. He used to call her a darling, a beauty, a runaway, his – _and maybe if she'd stopped she would have been_ – but her greedy fingers had kept her apart whilst he was heels over head.

"No, you're made for someone who won't consider you just one more thing they've done wrong."

With this, she stands. This was not a love story, it was a disaster - _where she knocked down vases and crashed into him and shattered herself on the forest floor_ – and she didn't choose for it to be anything otherwise. She's a misfortune, and she wouldn't wish all her bad luck on anyone but him because she knew he'd love her for it. But she wouldn't. Not this time.

"You've killed me, Yamanaka. You've torn my heart out."

He whispers. Like she's set him up, like six summers ago when she was twelve she was never ripped to pieces by his somewhat friend. She closes her eyes as she stops at the door, pausing and thinking that instead of writing religion on her skin she should have managed to write love songs or something beautiful. But she's not going to be his princess, his beloved, his anything. Not this time. This time, she's going to love him and he's not going to stay and one day she'll forget this ever happened. First loves were for little children, and second loves were for fools. One day, this would mean nothing. But she's blinking back tears anyway.

"You got me good too."

With that, she's gone, and he's trying to think how he ever became so heartless and cold. Maybe it was a side affect of her, from being hollowed out. This time he's just running through the motions of life, like he was her. Like he was human. When he starts crying, that's not because of her. It's because of everything else, because he refuses to let this be something to do with her.

This is how to hide in human skin: tear your heart out.

* * *

This is how to dress as a monster.

"You can do better."

Juugo tells Ino, as she slides her thin arms out across the table. She has the outskirts of madness rimming her eyes, and the rest of the emptiness is a blank tundra that she can hide without even trying anymore. There are puncture marks up her arms again, and instead of the cards in front of her she wants the filthy and bruised hope she has on the table.

"But I want to do much, much worse."

She answers – _bend yourself to this sight love, I will stay like this forever because_ – I'm starved. She wants his affection, or whatever it is; and not just a mission and money and something that made her feel sick when she thought about it too long. Every guy wants a pretty fuck up, because they think they're more vulnerable and the kid will do what they want. Truth is, she never tells a single one of them, is that they're wrong. That she's much more dangerous than anyone they've ever met, and no, she's not their baby because she's about to slit their damn throat. He bows his head.

"Sticks and stones."

He tells her, but she'll make sure the words hurt. He can't call her heartless when he has become so himself. He can't call her a fool because he has more jagged scars on his dark skin from being caught than she'll ever have. He can't call her useless because he has the same bruises from metal jammed against his throat. Hypocrites, he almost reasons, are made for one another.

"Yeah, they'll break your bones. But reality is too cruel, isn't it darling?"

It's not a question, she tells him without even saying. He knows it's rhetorical, that she's just fucking with him like she always has. This is where she throws herself into a hard, uncompromising light, and smacks her head into the table. This is where she cries. This is where he won't hold her. Not this time.

"What are we doing?"

He asks her softly, then tears his hand away from the air it had been hovering in. He won't comfort her. He won't tell her that it's ok, that they can be something beautiful instead of a disaster. Because it's not alright. Because they'll never be something that isn't just a mess and two kids looking for more than a smile to make them feel good.

"We're breathing."

She answers in between small hiccups. Mascara is sliding on to the table in hot water, and he can't bring himself to wipe it away. He finds it almost funny, the way that she's done this all her life. This silly little thing of pretending to be alive. Because you are alive, as long as you're breathing, and she likes to think it's beautiful.

"This isn't cruelty. It's surviving."

He finally says, emptying the glass in front of him. People are looking because they know. Or so he likes to think. But then again, she'd never tell anyone about what she did with him. He was pretty and disastrous, or so she told him once, but in her eyes that was what made her a traitor. Not that he was allied to Konoha very weakly, or that Sasuke would die if he made a single move that wasn't thought through, but the fact that she had even looked at him. In her lowest hour, that was what she had tried to say. It hadn't convinced him at all.

"Who wants to survive anyway?"

She asks, and stands from the table. He decides at this moment in time there is nothing worse than a drunken patriot, with big doll eyes and slender legs to run from him. She's gone before he can stop her, but he races after her anyway. He doesn't love her. He does. But who cares. He doesn't want to anymore.

"Stop!"

He shouts. He can see her running up the Hokage building. He knows it's the tallest in Konoha, her favourite because she loves heights and she's always wanted to go out in style. With a bang, just like a star. But he'd promise her a milky way if it meant she just listened to him for once, even if she just laughed at what he said.

"Never!"

She screams as she gives him a wicked smile. She's always believed in the sort of confined beauty she wants to have; the kind with carefully trimmed roses and painting by numbers. The kind of beauty that is so refined and polished it's kept in a vault, and nobody can touch it. But this is not what she is. She is a mutineer, stumbling with scraped knees and slashed elbows and showing him the stitches where people tried to keep her clean but never really managed. She is the kind of beauty that refuses to be vulnerable and shaken, that's not expected; the kind that is all wrong and too much to be held back.

"You're killing yourself!"

She has witches eyes as she turns her back to the ground, and he stares up at her. Her spindly arms are flung out in the air giving her some semblance of grace, but she's not perfect. She can't find faith like him. She has a devil-may-care life, and she'll try to give it up one day, he likes to think. But not just yet. Not while she can do this to anyone, and she's choosing to do it to him.

"You've already ripped my heart out a thousand times over."

She shouts, like he means something as he catches her words. He runs forward. Her legs loosen and she falls. Later she'll tell him how his beauty was the same kind as hers, the bandit kind that's half stunning and half ugly. The kind that's raw and sets fire through your body under the skin until you feel like you can't breathe. This is what he wants to believe, this is what he wants to believe, this is what he wants.

With her, he thinks love is like this. Like her revolution, where she wants something different than just what she was; like the way life wasn't just rough around the edges and soft underneath the barbed wire surface, it was rough the whole way through and it could never be tamed; like there was no sense of boundaries to hold her back.

He catches her fingers by mere centimeters and pulls her into him before stumbling back. He lands bruised and in pain; yet she takes flight and manages to get away with nothing but a weak smile. He can smell the alcohol on her, covering the natural sweat and cheap perfume and flowers he'd grown used to. She's drunk and in love, and he's eating his own heart out by saying no. She's sitting on his chest and looking down at him. She's got foggy eyes and looks cold and alone more than he ever has.

"Ripping out your heart won't kill you."

He finally murmurs, trying to avoid looking at her. But there are no stars out tonight. There is nothing to draw him away from her frozen wasteland of beauty, the kind where if he shows it too much warmth it'll be gone forever. The kind that he loves about her.

"Then strangle me."

_Because anything_, she didn't need to say to him, _was better than being this alone_. Because she likes to think he's wrong. That they can jump. That she will keep on falling. That he'll help her paint the sidewalks if he doesn't catch her all over again. But she also knows some stories aren't meant to be told, and this is why she takes his hands and puts them around her neck for the second time. Because this time, if he does the job right, they'll be nothing more than another stain on the city streets and everything will be alright because the way she is breathing doesn't mean that she is alive in the slightest.

"Don't make me do this."

He tells her. His memories are replaying of that night, flickering and dim but they are his - _female-male-female-victim-victim-victim-you, darling with your tiny and useless and battered body _– and he can't do this. He can still remember the way he thought she'd set him off, with her pretty face looking down or up and the way she'd look just like a broken doll with a snapped neck and a streak of blood across her cheek as her head was thrown back at the culmination of their spent time.

"Because people like you make me want to believe."

She whispers. She's said it before, he knows. She's said it once she's intruded where she shouldn't have been, back when she'd stopped him at the last minute. This time, she won't need to. He wouldn't give her the chance to do it again; he'd always tried to convince himself of that since then. That if there was a next time, she'd be really beautiful with her petite smashed body spread out on the ground with her hair fanned out behind her in a golden halo. But he doesn't have the faith anymore; he knows this as soon as he feels the bloodlust fade. His hands drop to his side.

"I love you."

He tells her. She gives him her best plastered on grin that's never fooled him a single time. It occurs to him at this moment how long her eyelashes are, and the way they dip into sooty shadows just above her cheeks is really nice. He raises her hand to touch her face instead, and she recoils from the touch. He flinches slightly when she does so.

"If you loved me, you wouldn't hurt me like this."

She stands and begins to walk away. This time, he gets the feeling she won't be coming back. That this time, she won't wait for him in bars until eleven fifty nine at night because waiting for twelve was all wrong when you weren't a fairytale princess. Her magic, he thinks, can only last so long. That is why this time, she is running away. She won't leave anything to remember either. He doesn't know if she ever intended to.

This is how to dress as a monster: make the real one want to be found.

* * *

He is Juugo.

It is Monday. He is no more than what she wants him to be; and his name will always be a pointless thing when she wasn't using it. With just a little time and her, he'd like to think he'd be gone. Maybe one day, he will be; but for now he'll carve himself into her memory because he's never wanted anything quite as much as he wants her. Just to ensure that in some way, he is still with her. That this time, it really might be love if he wishes for it hard enough.

It is Tuesday. There is no fire but he can feel his skin burning in pain. He knows what it's like to wear real scars amongst the false, what it feels like not to know anything worth knowing. He's sorry that he couldn't be every man that she ever wanted, sorry because he's shivering but he's still stronger and more vulnerable than she'll ever be. He's sorry because she's waiting outside the her apartment door knowing that he's seen who she really is, and she can't offer him anything but that because she's not good with really meaning anything she says. She'd struggle anyway, to find words that were complimentary for someone who would want to forget her. She wouldn't even be able to begin.

(It is Wednesday. Not even she can help him, because she won't come back.)

It is Thursday. He wants to think they'll pull through this. Karin sneers and tells him without even knowing what he is thinking that no girl ever pulls through falling in love. Suigetsu laughs because people like them can't love. Sasuke tells him that it's Ino, and that everyone wants her because she makes you believe. She makes you think that she'll love you. But she never does, because her words are empty. Still, he'll believe in her more than he ever believed in anything else. Because even though he can't begin, he can always try to find an end.

It is Friday. He realises he's only believing because _sheneveraskedtobeloved_.

It is Saturday. He's barely breathing but he's still there. Sometimes he likes to think he could stop turning up her apartment and waiting for her to open the door, but it'll feel like she's asking him to leave because she doesn't want to love him anymore. It'll feel like her bloody hands streaking crimson down his sun kissed skin like the blood she wanted to spill just to stop this happening all over again. But he's questioning how. It's like how the sun loves flowers so blindly, and one day they don't want to be loved anymore and shrivel into the ground like they never wanted to be loved to begin with.

It is Sunday. Perhaps tonight he will dream that he is a beast, tearing her to pieces. Like he will stand there, just waiting for her strip off so he can count every scar after he has cut her skin to ribbons. Like he will leap in front of her fury and tell her he can't end this while they still have miles to leap. But he can't do that, not anymore.

It is Monday again, and he breaks down her door. He sits down with bruised arms and knows she's always fancied the colour purple, just like him, and he waits for her to sit down and know he's the only thing there. That he's all she has left. That his lips on hers means everything, not because it's affection but because it's her. Because she is more than just a stupid girl who fell for a monster. She frowns.

"I'm not what you want me to be."

He is Juugo, and he is a human. Because he asks her to be his anyway.

* * *

For more sensible stuff, wait for the epilogue. Love me, hate me, notice that I do not take life all that seriously because doing that makes you dull. For the penultimate time, if you feel particularly inclined, drop me a note, because constructive criticism is given a good home and reviews are loved like nothing else. :)


	7. Epilogue

Summary: _(This is how to drink your hypocrisy down, how to become enamoured with your lies, how to live in your own skins.) This is how to love a monster. _

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Sorry it took me so long to finish this. I could go into particular detail about being horribly ill and sixth form on top of that being wonderfully time consuming when you take pretty much all coursework and essay based subjects, but I have no need to. This shall be finished today, reader.

Warning(s): Bad language, mentions of M rated stuff, seriously dark at some points.

* * *

**Skins**

* * *

**_Epilogue_**

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a boy and a monster.

Except, the boy was gullible and drunk down the faith he was given because he'd believed in whatever he was told from twelve years old and coated his skin in inky printed letters saying God; and the monster was vicious and vindictive, she liked to think that not being repulsive made her something more than just alive, and in the dreams of long ago she was the person to count forever as everyday or sometimes with him because he was more than just another fucked up mess helping her think of what not to feel.

There were no princes in their story, just forest floor sex and a dream of God because he made her want to think such a thing could exist. Because some nights he lifted his animalistic hands, and put them around her neck – _and she believes that one day he'll kill her when he does and she won't feel sorry about it because he is beautiful he is_ - because he could do anything. She'd give him that. He could do the worst damn things, and somewhere along the crusted crimson trails drawn in the dirt he thought she was special too. Well, all the time, always. It was too much.

She'd accepted long ago that this story wasn't a proper one, that when it started he was just the boy nobody wanted to love or wanted and she was just a pretty beast offering him nothing in return for his company but liquefied danger until he knew what safety really was. She should have known to keep him away. She'd seen him make a girl cry, watch it, then have so much remorse it made her feel sick. But she wanted to believe that someone who was so harmless wouldn't be so kind to her and tear away their foundation and she knew if anyone asked her reputation pertained that she wouldn't even need to pretend it was her who made him crack, not the other way around.

She supposed it was sort of like they were like a man and a woman in a book; except their story wasn't like every single scribbled out best seller with a happily ever after where the vagabond runaway was whatever the lead wanted and that was how she wanted it. Because nobody would believe that the boy was the one to hurt her, the one to recite prayers over and over to make her think herself beautiful – _justlikehim justlikehim justlikehim in every heartbeat _– because he couldn't give you anything and pull his half-hearted dusty heart from directly under the one person to mean something.

Once upon a time, there was them; and whenever he was asked what happened, he'd give a simple reply because nobody needed to know that he had every remorse for breaking the so called unbreakable, that if he ever had any such thing in his body nobody needed to know it even though it did exist, that he told himself that was the reason for his shaking hands instead of inside really enjoying every bloody second of this fucked up mess but he didn't really want to be the one that enjoyed loving her.

But still, they're standing here like this, and he's listening to the same answer over and over until it makes her want to just give in if it means him showing her what love really is all over again –_ if it means him saying he loves her just once more_ – because she loves him and somehow he doesn't need to say he loves her too because she knows it but she wants to hear it anyway. So does he, and that's why he's hoping that saying that her being nothing he needs over and over will make them both wonder how long it takes until he shouts back that he wants her anyway though he probably knows it'll never work.

Once upon a time, there was a boy and a monster. Except the boy didn't know when he was telling the truth anymore even though he was enamoured with praying for something like her, so he didn't know who he was anymore; and the monster had beauty that was anything but skin deep so it shook him to the very core, until he couldn't think of a reason why he wouldn't have told her that he really did want her anyway. Just to top it off, if anyone asked, he'd say their story was called this: **How to Love a Monster**.

And yes, he'd make it end happily ever after no matter what.

* * *

I hope you like that serving of ending cheese on stick? ~ 3

Yes, it was romance / angst. Does not mean it should end it nastily like I normally do and was hinted at. How mean am I? But I am sad it has ended. This was my sort of odd, cracked-up-if-slightly-awesome-pairing of 2009. But this year is soon to end. Be prepared for the new onslaught of things that do not make entire sense but are so sexy you just cannot say no. Aloha hoi, Sasuke Uchiha and finishing things I should have finished long ago. Righhht?

Again, much thanks to _Demonic Angel Clone_ for the prodding, _Super-Sweet_ for being my pet goldfish, and _Corderoy Pants_ for being the love of my life and kicking this off with checking odd bits and bobs I wasn't really sure I liked. Many thanks also to the people who have read, reviewed, alerted, favourited, and other stuff I probably will think of later. You guys are my cup of very expensive Whittards London tea.

For the last time, if you feel particularly inclined, drop me a note, because constructive criticism is given a good home and reviews are loved like nothing else.

Thanks for reading. :)


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